Global universality of the expected number of zeros of non-analytic random signals

Abstract

We study the asymptotics as $n$ goes to infinity of $\mathbb E\left[\mathcal{N}(S_n,[0,2\pi])\right]$, the expected number of zeros in $[0, 2\pi]$ of a random periodic signal $S_n$ of the form \[ S_n(t)=\sum_{k=1}^{n}a_k f(kt), \] where $f$ is a non-analytic $2\pi-$periodic function and the coefficients $(a_k)$ are i.i.d. random variables, centered with unit variance. We show in particular that if $a_1$ admits a finite third moment and if the function $f$ is piecewise polynomials and of class $\mathcal C^{7}$, then we have the following universal asymptotics, independent of the particular law of the coefficients $(a_k)$ \[ \lim_{n \to +\infty}\frac{\Esp\left[\mathcal{N}(S_n,[0,2\pi])\right]}{n}= \frac{2}{\sqrt{3}}\sqrt{\frac{\|f'\|_{L^2([0,2\pi])}}{\|f\|_{L^2([0,2\pi])}}}. \] This result thus extends in expectation and at the scale of the whole period $[0,2\pi]$ the local universality property established {in [Angst-Poly, IMRN, 2019]}, in distribution and in shrinking intervals of size $1/n$. Moreover, it generalizes to a non-analytic context the global universality results obtained in the more classical frameworks of random trigonometric polynomials or random analytic functions. Our approach combines a new almost sure Central Limit Theorem \`a la Salem--Zygmund for the function $S_n$ when evaluated at a uniform random point in $[0, 2\pi]$, and as well as suitable uniform integrability and anti-concentration estimates.